"d.a.m.n him! He had no right." She kicked the wall. "Ouch!" she cried when her toe stubbed the stone wall, and she lost her balance and fell on her behind.

However, instead of hitting hard ground, she landed in soft, freshly shoveled dirt.

"Those sneaky little devils," she said aloud, and pushed herself off the ground.

She walked outside, crouching to avoid hitting her head on the way out, then returned with one of the shovels, really more a spade for her, but it accomplished the task. On hands and knees, never minding the filth staining her dress, she dug until she reached a layer of straw and twigs. Tearing away the nest-like cover, she soon caught a tiny reflection of her dirty dress.

"Those darling, sneaky rascals," she said.

Inspired by her success, she tore into the rest of the straw and made a hole large enough to pull out the mirror. Heavier than she expected, she struggled to lift it, but got it high enough finally to prop it on her knees and waddle out into the yard like a duck.

The sun looked down squarely from the western sky and she knew that her time was short.

Quickening her pace, she lifted the mirror higher, aiming for her thigh and hip, but it slipped and tumbled from her hands, landing gla.s.s side down on the rocky ground.

Snow fell to her knees and cried. She had destroyed the mirror, and her only chance to help the girl trapped inside. She dropped her hands, clasping them in her lap, in the fold of her dress, and let her tears drain down the dirt and dust on her face.

She looked less a princess than a scullery maid, a cinder girl, a common household servant now.

After several minutes, however, she stopped and crawled toward the looking gla.s.s. If it wasn't broken too completely, she might be able to fashion the pieces together again somewhat and perhaps even enough to do some remaining good for the girl inside.

When she reached it, she took a deep breath and flipped it over.

The d.a.m.n thing was still intact. Not even scratched.

"It's a magic mirror," she chided herself.

She looked for her reflection but the dirt was so thick on the gla.s.s that she couldn't make out more than a dull shadow of something through it. Desperate to see the girl again, she gathered the hem of her dress, spit on it like she'd seen her friends do, and began to wipe it as clean as she could.

She was greeted not by her own reflection, but by the image of the blonde girl. No longer in pain, no longer coughing up fire and blood and bile. The girl simply sat in a wooden chair, gazing ahead, smiling at her.

Snow waved.

The girl returned the gesture.

"What do you want me to do?" Snow asked.

The girl shook her head.

"I don't understand." Snow lowered her eyes, focusing on the ground. "I want to help you, but I can't understand you."

The girl began to speak, but Snow couldn't make out the words. After a few minutes, the girl wrote the symbols again on the parchment tablet as before. Snow again shook her head.

"I can't read that. It's too old."

The girl yelled at her silently and threw the parchment on the floor.

Snow looked away and began to cry again.

"Don't cry, Snow." A hand on her shoulder, stubby and squat. Squash. "If this is the role we play in events, then we must play them as fate prescribes us." He took Snow's hand and helped her stand.

"You're home early," she said.

"We never reached the mine today. No sooner did we cross the mountain path than we saw the Queen's army on the march. At least three hundred fighting men behind her and she rides a dragon at the helm of the battalion. We hid in the woods for hours until we were certain she had pa.s.sed rather than lead her here. There's precious little time, though, until she finds this place."

"My stepmother's army?"

"She is coming for you, Snow."

Snow dropped to one knee. Squash rested his hand on her shoulder.

"The girl. She is telling you to recite the runes along the frame."

"But I don't know-"

"She translates them into an old human tongue from hundreds of years ago. I know it because my father's father taught me the old tongues. But most of my kind has forgotten them."

"So you can recite it?"

He took Snow's hand. "No. I'm sorry. It must be read by one of royal blood." He squeezed gently. "But I can help you recite it."

Fourth Movement-And She Lived Happily Ever After No sooner had Snow uttered the runic incantation than did the Queen's army top the mountain. The Queen led the charge, sitting across the neck of her dragon, a monstrous black and gold brute with a wingspan of several cottages and claws like broadswords. Beneath them her army marched toward the Deadlands, their boot steps resonating in unison so loudly that they could be heard all the way to the cave.

Even with the battle still nearly seven king's acres away.

Leader didn't care, though. He was busy dragging Snow away from the mirror, which had begun to pulse like a ring of water, flickering in ripples of gla.s.s and light and color. After a few moments, the gla.s.s grew still again.

"Is that it?" she said.

"Sadly, no." He stood between her and the gla.s.s, facing away from her, puffing out his chest to guard her from as much as his squat stump of a body would allow. "Remember this," he said, almost in a whisper. "This was not the best way, but it was the only way to save you."

"I don't under-" she started, but stopped.

A hand emerged from the gla.s.s.

Then the crown of a fair-haired head.

Then finally, the girl herself rose from the mirror and stepped away from it onto the ground.

She smiled at Snow, then glanced down at the surface of the mirror. Leader leaned in but saw nothing in its face but his own reflection.

The girl didn't look away. "Farewell, Ulysses. I shall miss you, old friend."

He couldn't resist the urge to peak again to see what he was missing. His whiskers itched from the need to see. Still, nothing returned his gaze but his own confused stare.

The girl turned, took a deep breath, looking into the sky.

"Home at last," she said and strode toward Snow.

Leader held his ground between them.

"If you've come to harm her ..." he said, deciding the threat was just as effective if unfinished.

"Harm her?" The girl laughed. "She saved me from an epoch of captivity. I've come to thank her."

She took another step toward Snow, but he held his ground.

"What did she open?"

"Just a portal for me to return home. I lived in this kingdom long before you were born, not long after your people were created from the mountains. Before your kind was banished to the Deadlands."

"I thought as much."

"It was my father, little darshve, who drove your kind away and made the land safe for humans."

"That was many, many years ago. Why return now, princess of ancient times?"

The girl lowered herself and knelt so that her face almost pressed against his own. "Because, creature of greed, this kingdom is my home, and was mine before it was stolen from my father by the one who now plays at being its Queen."

"Your time has past. You have a new kingdom." He pushed his face so that it touched hers, and she wrinkled her nose and backed away. "This is no longer your world."

"It will be," she said and sidestepped him, reaching for Snow's hand. "Regardless, my name is Alice, and I am in your debt, princess."

Snow took her hand, and Leader glared at her. "Should I know you?" Snow asked. "I feel like I should somehow."

Alice laughed. "Had time not been stopped for me, I might have been your grandmother of many ages past. But as it stands, we will have to be satisfied being half-sisters."

He saw Snow's legs about to give way, and he steadied her.

"Sisters?"

"Yes. The witch who thought she killed you is also the one who stole my father from me. She killed him after she married him. Then trapped me inside the world beyond the mirror so she could have the throne to herself."

Leader could stand no more, and he tore Alice's hand from Snow's. "Enough. That witch, the Queen, comes now with an army to murder your half-sister. What can you do to stop that, Ancient Queen Alice?" he sneered.

She laughed again. "More than is needed, little beast man."

She pushed him aside and stood over the mirror, then recited a verse of runic tongue, and the mirror flickered and rippled again.

This time however, it did not stop.

Nor did a human hand emerge.

Instead a tendril rose above the gla.s.s, tapering into a mouth full of knifelike teeth, followed by another, then another, nearly thirty in all, and then a sinewy leg of muscle and visible bone, then two arms of similar makeup, each thin like tree limbs but taller than a full-grown oak, each ending in a tangle of claws long as Norse boat oars. Protruding from its back were two ma.s.sive wings of thickened, dried blood.

When at last the beast stood completely in the world Leader knew as real, it towered over the cave and rivaled the mountain in height.

Leader and his brothers scrambled in the creature's shade for whatever cover they could find. Alice merely stood between the behemoth's gigantic legs and helped Snow regain her footing.

"Beware the Jabberwock," Alice said. "The b.a.s.t.a.r.d child of the elder G.o.ds."

High atop the Jabberwock, Alice watched as the foot soldiers of her ancient enemy ran for their lives. None survived, of course. Those who weren't trampled beneath the feet of the elder G.o.ds were gathered up by the biting tendrils and consumed alive, their screams blanketing the mountainside until only the Queen and her dragon remained.

She had tried to escape, flying away to the Northern lands, but the Jabberwock had been a mere trifle among the creatures of the oldest world, and kingdoms were but a footstep for the largest of them, and there was no place in the world she knew to escape their reach.

In the end, Alice simply waited for the elders to return from across the sea with the beast and the witch in their grip.

When they did return, the ancient creature tore the wings from the dragon and fed them to the youngest among them. Then they lay the beast on the ground before Alice and placed the half-dead form of the witch-queen beside her steed.

"What are these magnificent creatures?" the defeated woman asked.

Alice smiled. "They are my allies."

"They will destroy this world like they destroyed the one beyond the mirror."

"All worlds return to the green in time, witch."

The witch spit in Alice's face. "But you'll be long dead, girl. There's no magic here to keep you young."

"I've lived long enough, more than anyone should be allowed. It's enough for me to die in my homeland."

The witch shook her head. "I don't think so. You're corrupt now, just like me, just like your father would have become if I hadn't killed him."

Before she realized she had moved, Alice's hand snapped like a vine and struck the woman full in the face. "Don't mention my father, b.i.t.c.h!" she spat.

"Just like me now," the witch said again, wiping the blood from her lips with the back of her hand then tasting it. "You can't be satisfied with killing me. You have to conquer. Is that not what you've promised your allies?"

Alice looked up to see most of the elder G.o.ds already moving across the face of the land, some heading into the lands past the mountains and others walking toward the sea.

Someone tugged at her sleeve.

"Sister?" asked Snow. "Is it true? Have you promised our kingdom to these monsters?"

Alice grinned.

"I have. But I don't intend to keep that promise."

"You have a plan?"

Of course I do, Alice thought. But she said nothing.

"You were always a dim child, Snow," said the witch-queen. "You cannot trust your half-sister. Listen to the dwarves you've chosen to live with. They'll tell you."

Alice watched as the stubby darshve who had tried to protect Snow from her stepped forward. "We all have our parts." He pointed at the Queen. "Even her."

"Well said, little man."

Alice gazed up at the Jabberwock, her eyes seeing something she knew the rest of them couldn't see, her words entering places the rest of them couldn't go. Then she broke the stare and frowned at her stepmother.